


Afterimage

by natmerc



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natmerc/pseuds/natmerc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been more than a decade since the events in "Last Knight" and Natalie's moved to a small town and into a human life... and then a blackened corpse ends up on her coroner's table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterimage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miashael](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miashael/gifts).



> This was originally written for "Miashael" in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge. 
> 
> I'd like to thank all my beta readers (Lynn Rosetta-Cusick, Elke Tanzer, Dianne DeSha, and Ladybug218). If there's any mis-placed commas left standing, they're entirely my fault.
> 
> (slightly revised from the yuletidetreasures website archive)

When the call came in from the police, I'd already been working for a couple of hours. The sun was halfway up, shining its feeble rays and trying to warm the snow-covered ground with no success. The call was from Ted Briskorn. He was one of the local RCMP officers stationed here at Kelly's Creek, and the one who came across the man, on fire and flailing as he tried and then succeeded in getting out of his burning pickup truck before falling down dead at Ted's feet.

"Never saw anything like it, Nat. Weirdest thing." He took off his cap and ran his hand over his mostly bald head. The little hair he had left was cropped close to his skull. "I mean, he just kept coming straight at me. He didn't try and roll on the ground to put out the fire or anything." 

I eyed the black body bag that the ambulance attendants were wheeling into the cold-room. The town wasn't big enough to rate a morgue, but I did have access to this single room to perform autopsies, something I thankfully didn't have to do much anymore. 

"So what happened?"

"Damnedest thing. Here we are, it's 5 am and this guy blasts past me and Ted in our patrol car. He's doing maybe 130, 140 clicks on a road I wouldn't go past 80 on myself. You know, the old dirt Mattie road."

"I know it." Had driven it a few times taking Amy to hockey practice. Kelly's Creek didn't have its own hockey rink, and Back End, just thirty kilometers down the road, had the nearest facility. Considering that Back End was half the size of Kelly's Creek, the parents' association was always doing some fund-raiser or other to rectify the situation. That was neither here nor there. The Mattie road was narrow, winding and partially washed out in spots. If it didn't cut about twenty minutes off the drive to Back End, no one would use it.

I noticed something strange about the body bag. The shape was wrong, like an arm had moved or something. I leaned to the right to look past Ted and get a better look before it disappeared, but I was too late. The attendants had already gotten it inside and closed the door. No matter. I'd be looking at it soon enough, and it wouldn't be leaving on me. 

"We had a damn time catching up, too. Came across the truck on its side -- must've flipped, and it was burning away. This guy comes out, all on fire and starts staggering, almost running towards us. Then he drops down all of a sudden. Freaky." He shook his head and twisted the cap around again. I saw that he had a couple of red marks along the sides of his hand and one larger blotch on his palm.

"Get burned bad putting him out? I can look at that for you."

"Not too bad. Nothing that needs tending to. Had to put that fire out right quick. What if he'd still been alive?"

"Small chance of that. Not from what you told me. What do you need from me, then?"

"Dentals. Identifying marks. That sort." 

"You're not doing an investigation then?"

"Clear enough what the man died of. Stupidity. Recklessness and stupidity."

"Going 140?"

"That's what we figure. We didn't have the radar on, so we can't be sure, but that's the estimate I'll put in my report." Ted turned his cap over, and then put it back on his head at a jaunty angle. He looked good in his uniform and knew it. Only thirty- seven, he kept himself in good shape and had the single local women beating a path to his door, balding pate or no. 

"So what do you need from me? It doesn't sound like a mystery to me: a tragedy, yes - mystery, no."

"Well. I know it's not your main job here. But you do have all that forensics experience."

"Yes. I do."

"Just get some details we can send out for an ID. Ted and I'll head back out and go through the truck. See if we can get some identification he left behind. We didn't have much luck the first time, it being on fire at the time."

"What about the truck? Didn't you track the plates?"

"Stolen just a few hours ago."

"I've got a full day here, Ted. I told Judy that I'd be back in a few minutes, and I've got a full waiting room."

"No rush. The body's in the cooler. We could call someone else in, but..."

"I know. I know. I'm the town coroner."

"That's what you get for wearing too many hats."

"Well. Right now I have to put my general practitioner's hat back on and see some patients or I'll have a minor revolt on my hands."

"Aw, you could handle it." And then Ted smiled, and I regretted, again, turning him down the one and only time he'd asked me for a date. Damn him for being eight years younger. He hadn't seemed to mind, but these days I felt every one of my forty-five years. Stupid cultural hang-ups. I was the last one not to date someone because of an age difference, but it still felt wrong. It didn't help that I never seemed to have any spare time these days. 

"Thanks." What was I supposed to say? That I'd faced worse things? That this wasn't my first charred corpse either? I just smiled, waved him goodbye and got back to filling out prescriptions for migraine medication, birth control pills and doing pap smears. Some days I regretted going back for retraining, but this wasn't one of them. I wasn't looking forward to looking at another blackened body. It was going to bring back too many memories.

* * *

I phoned Amy to tell her to start supper without me and that I'd be late getting home. She went on a minor rant about my working overtime that I only half listened to before she segued into some story a classmate had told her about how a high speed Internet connection improved kids' grade levels because of the greater access to information.

I told her she'd have to be satisfied with spending every minute of the evening on the phone instead of on MSN. Then she yelled at me and hung up. Teenagers. If my brother Richard hadn't died so young, and then Sarah hadn't been hit by that damn drunk driver five years ago, I'd probably have missed the joys of dealing with teenage angst. God help me when she got serious about dating. For now I just had to be thankful that she thought most of the boys at her school were losers.

Lifting a slat of the front blinds, I peeked outside. No snow tonight. It was already almost full dark, and I was glad that I'd put the winter tires on. Even in town, the roads could be slippery. 

With a sigh, I bundled my thick hair back with a couple of scrunchies to get it out of the way. Judy was always getting after me to get it all cut off and to use some dye to cover up the gray. Considering that Judy's hair got redder every year she went past sixty, she could probably recommend a few good brands. It was just gray hair, though, it didn't mean I was getting old. I half snorted with laughter. Sure it did. Just because I still felt twenty-eight on the inside didn't mean I still was. Not that I'd be twenty-eight again for all the world. I made so many mistakes when I was younger. Good mistakes. Bad mistakes. 

I slipped on some gloves and a disposable apron. I'd have to get the face visor out of the back before I started investigating. Rules are rules. Judy had gone home and there was no one there to assist, but that didn't mean I could forget them. Heaven help me if I caught something blood-borne. When I reached for the door handle, I heard a noise coming from inside the room. Ted? Frowning, I turned the knob and headed inside.

And got the second biggest shock of my life.

There, standing before me was a man, an intruder. He was standing in front of the body on the stainless steel table, blocking my view. It looked like he'd grabbed the forensics gear because he was wearing one of the aprons, some gloves and my face shield. The body bag was unzipped, and he was reaching inside, holding something.

I made a sound. I don't remember if I said something, or grunted or what, but he heard me. He whirled around and I saw he was holding a stake. A stake, for god's sake. The overhead lights glinted off the face shield and I couldn't make out his features. He stared at me. I couldn't see his eyes, but I knew he was staring. Something was wrong. Even my head felt a bit fuzzy. And then a hand, a dark, blackened, burnt hand reached out from the body bag behind him and grabbed at his arm. Remnants of fingernails reflected the light as the fingers tightened their grip. 

"Shit." That was me, of course. The intruder didn't waste time swearing or staring at me, he just reacted to the threat behind him. He turned back so fast I hardly saw him move. I did see the stake arc out and down, a blur slamming into the chest of the body on the examining table. There was a scream that turned quickly into a death rattle, and then nothing. 

Vampires. I was in a cold storage room of a funeral home with vampires; one of them very much alive. 

The man turned back towards me and I knew what would happen. Either he'd lift up his visor and try to whammy me into forgetting this whole scene, or he'd kill me. I didn't know which one would happen but if I had a choice, I was going to pick door number one, thank you very much. I could fake being whammied. I'd done it before. Damn. Dammit all to hell. I didn't need this in my life anymore. I'd worked long and hard at healing, at helping Amy to heal. I'd moved to this tiny town on the coastal waters of Nova Scotia where strangers would be noticed in the hopes of never meeting another vampire and what happens? Another dead vampire on my slab. 

And then door number three happened. He stepped towards me: once, twice, and then he raised his hand towards me. 

"Nat?"

I recognized his voice. 

And I turned and ran. Ran for my life.

* * *

It was times like this that I wished that I hadn't quit smoking. I'd never smoked very much, recreationally mostly, but right now I was desperate for something to calm my nerves. The emergency chocolate bar from underneath the front seat of my car hadn't been enough. 

Amy was oblivious. On the phone in her room, and oblivious. My knees were still shaking. I ate a slice of the pizza she'd thrown in the oven for supper, more to avoid any questions than because I wanted to put any food in my mouth. 

The doorbell rang, and for a second, I thought about letting Amy getting it. It was probably one of her friends anyway, and then I just couldn't take the chance. I walked quickly to the door, yelling at Amy to stay in her room and do her homework. She'd be safer out of sight. 

Damn. Super-damn hearing. Forgot about that. Now he knew about Amy. There was too much I was forgetting. 

I opened the door, and there he was. Nick. Nick Whatever-he-was- calling-himself-this-decade.

"Hi, Nat." He was wearing jeans now, and had a black leather jacket over a blue shirt. It was all camouflage. He probably didn't even feel the cold. 

"Nick."

We stared at each other for a long time, taking stock. All the warm air was heading straight outside, but I didn't care. He looked the same, mostly. Still that blond hair, and the slightly angular face that was halfway between beautiful and boyish. The eyes were the same, serious now, not smiling. He had a bit of dark stubble along his cheeks, and looked a bit thinner than I remembered him the last time I'd seen him. I tried not to remember those last days much anymore.

"Going to invite me in?"

I thought about shoving the door closed. He might go. He might break it down. Or he might just leave and come back tomorrow night. I stepped back and invited him in. The fire was going in the wood stove, and I went over and stood beside it, rubbing my arms briskly and drinking in the warmth. "It's been a long time."

He turned, looking around. It was a large, open living room. A big, patterned red rug covered the old wood floors and ran up to the edge of a somewhat worn beige and blue couch and chair set. Big blue pillows covered the couch, and the coffee table was strewn with magazines and a few books. The house was nice, but it was more comfortable than luxurious. I made a good salary, but with Amy and her friends putting serious wear on whatever I owned, I figured there was no point in luxury until she was safely off to university. God, I hoped she stayed in her room.

I thought of the body back at the funeral home, waiting for me, and I hoped that the funeral director would stay out like he was supposed to, and no one else came in and found it. Maybe Nick had taken care of it; made it disappear or something. That would almost be more trouble. Vanishing bodies are not good for a coroner's reputation. 

"You look the same."

"So do you." He smiled when he said it. That honest smile that had fooled so many women over the centuries.

"Liar."

He grinned then, his eyes crinkling at the corners and it was like the sun was shining from beneath his face. He was beautiful. God, that hurt.

"What are you doing here?"

His face fell. He was still smiling, but it was more guarded now. This smile was the polite version. 

"A lot has happened since we... since we parted ways."

"You go around killing vampires now?"

"When they're infected, yes." 

"Infected?"

"The Wyatt virus, the same one that started back in Toronto in the nineties and that you helped find the cure - or we thought you cured. It came back. It mutated. It came back, and we haven't been able to find a way to get past it. It just rages on in the vampire until they're dead."

Visions of out-of-control vampires raging through my small town gave me the chills. Once they past a certain point, they'd be almost mindless with hunger but still have the superhuman strength and other abilities that made the vampires so dangerous. If they didn't have qualms about killing humans, the townspeople, many of them my friends, could be in mortal danger. Since most of them only seemed to be worried about themselves, that was a strong possibility. 

"How many are there?"

"Here? None now. I'm sure." He didn't look sure. He might be lying. It was always hard to tell. Now that I could see him better, I could see that he looked tired. It was more than the stubble on his cheeks, the result of neglect rather than manicured vanity. His clothes were a bit stained, and Nick had always been a bit of a clothes horse. Most of all, he looked like he needed some sleep. 

"You're hunting them?" It seemed all I was doing was asking questions, but it was better than him controlling the conversation. I didn't know what I wanted at the moment, but rehashing the past wasn't on the list.

"Yes." He laughed. A bitter, dark laugh. "I'm an Enforcer now, if you can believe that. A cop again, but on the vampire side, and there are a lot fewer rules to remember... or break."

I stared at him.

"So many have died in the past few years. Most of them you didn't know, but the Enforcers came to me for help in tracking down the remaining infected vampires. To try and cut it off."

"By killing the infected vampires?"

"Yes." He went over to the couch, and sat down. "It's been like being on the force in Toronto again, helping to protect humans, but then again it's not the same at all."

"Nothing's ever the same."

"No." He folded his hands together and leaned forward, closing his eyes. It almost looked like he was praying. Maybe he was. "LaCroix's dead."

Stone. I'd been turned to stone. A deep kernel of hate, buried for over a decade, flared to life in the pit of my stomach. "Dead?"

"Yes. I'm sure. Almost sure." Nick looked up at me and smiled ruefully at that statement. "We know he was infected and I haven't felt our connection for almost two years. He's a hard man to kill, so he may be out there somewhere, healing. He's probably dead."

"So you're free. Free of him." Nick was free to continue his quest for mortality, if he still wanted it. 

"I suppose." He stood up and started pacing; the same ball of contained energy I remembered.

"But now there's this virus to handle. We've made progress, just flare-ups now, and the whole community is so paranoid that everyone's spread out to the far corners of the Earth. It makes the job so much harder, but the infection rate's gone down too."

I stared at this man, this vampire, this Enforcer. "So you're here to make sure I don't talk?"

"No. I took care of a problem. Stopped another chain in the infection. Now, I'm here to see you." He turned towards me. "I've missed you."

Damn him. 

"I missed you, Nat. What we had, the years we spent together, the whole quest for a cure that turned so messy at the end, but..."

Damn him to hell for doing this to me now.

"Natalie?"

I turned away, hugging myself. I'd gone through a few years of counseling after I'd woken up and found myself in the hospital all alone. My old friend "Nick Knight" had skipped town, and I found a nice two hundred grand left mysteriously in my bank account. I'd wanted to take that money and burn it. Instead, I took a year's leave from the job and spent a good chunk of time down in sunny South America, working with some Habitat for Humanity housing projects and letting the sun burn me as brown as a walnut.

Then I came back up north and managed to get back into medical school for some upgrading and another internship as a general practitioner. I'd never wanted to cut up another dead body again, but life always plays tricks. First my sister-in-law had died and I'd been named Amy's guardian. Then this position had opened up and, sure, it had its county coroner slot attached to the job, but that was mostly paperwork, nothing like Toronto, where my whole world had revolved around the city morgue. Mingling too much with the dead and undead had almost led to my collapse. I couldn't go through that again. Except... I'd been the one to open the door again.

"Janette contacted me. Three years ago." Silence from his end. I wondered if it was a surprise or not. How deep was their connection now? "She wanted to know if I was still interested in finding a cure." I'd had to think about it. I waited weeks before my curiosity got the better of me and I phoned her back. I've always been too curious for my own good. "She's sent me some more blood, some information, samples - things like that. We've chatted on the phone a few times, but she's never visited." 

That's the way I wanted it, had demanded, and Janette had respected my wishes. 

"I'm not working on it full-time or anything, I've got too many other things happening, but it's a--" It was my turn to laugh now, although I didn't feel amused at all. "It's a hobby, I guess."

"Are you making progress?"

Questions. So many questions. There were never enough answers. Had my curiosity led to Nick being here? Had that poor dead vampire been looking for me? I'd been the one to figure out the cure for the original infection. How far had that knowledge spread?

"Yes." I looked him in the face now. That eternally youthful face stared back at me while I was going gray, my middle thicker than when I'd been in my thirties although I still looked good for my years. "I'm not close, I wouldn't say that, but I'm still working on it." He was silent. I couldn't read his face anymore. He was a different man than the one I'd known, the one I'd loved. 

"Good. I'm glad you're still working on it."

"Will there be a body in the morgue for me to examine when I get back there?"

"That depends on you." He wasn't smiling anymore. "I'm supposed to change your memories. Give you fake information to send for an ID trace and then get you to dummy up an autopsy file. I can't do that. You're a resistor." He paused. "Do you want it to disappear?"

Oh, yes, I did -- disappear. But then there'd be a huge furor over it, and the questions and the investigation, and all the rest. Was it worth it? Just so that I wouldn't be stepping into this dark world again any more than I was already? My agreement with Janette was a separate matter and I liked it that way. This was another step, and I had Amy to think of. 

"Can you give me fake dental x-rays?"

"They're back at the morgue."

"Then I'll fake the autopsy. Just one more time." I had a lot of practice with that. I'm sure some of the old excuses would come back to me. 

I still couldn't believe that he was here, in my house, just a stone's throw from the ocean and the sight of the cove, the rocks and the nearby lighthouse. I wanted him to walk up from behind and hug me, snuggle his face into the nape of my neck and give a little squeeze. I also wanted to yell at him to leave immediately. So of course, I did neither, just looked at him with what was probably a stupid look on my face. 

I heard motions from above, and then footsteps. Amy was coming downstairs. "You have to leave."

He looked up, towards the stairs. "Are you happy, Nat?"

I stepped up close, pushed on his arm. He didn't move, so I pushed at him again towards the door. "I've got a good life here, Nick. Please don't wreck it."

It was like pushing against a mountain. That's a vampire for you. Nick wasn't built like a tank, but he didn't move unless he wanted to. 

"I love you. I've always loved you."

Oh. My. God. Why now? Why not ten years ago when I was deep in depression over my friend's death and begging him to be part of my life? I closed my eyes and said nothing. I felt a touch against my cheek, a butterfly's wing of a kiss. When I opened my eyes again, the door was wide open and he was gone.

Amy came downstairs, big rottweiler slippers slapping against the floor. She went into the kitchen and got a drink of orange juice. By the time she got back into the living room, I'd shut the front door and was just staring at it, stunned stupid. 

"Somebody here?"

"Hmm?" 

"I heard voices. Who was here?"

"Just something to do with work." I reached for my jacket and gloves. "I've got to go back in for a couple of hours. I'll take my cell phone in case you need anything."

She waved at me when I left. And I cleaned up for him one last time. But I took a couple of samples first. Damn my curiosity.


End file.
